Metalworks, designing & making
Within the framework of European Capital of Culture 2022, held in Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg), I have curated and designed the exhibition ‘Metalworks, designing & making’ at the Konschthal in the city of Esch.
Esch was at the center of the European steel industry over the past hundred years or so and its heritage is shaped by the industry, offering an very poignant context to the exhibition subject.
For this project some forty contemporary design objects have been selected and divided into sixteen fabrication categories, each one of them exploring a particular method of processing metal.
Highlighting the diversity inherent to the material and the creative approaches, the different categories range from craft to high-tech. Each object has been carefully chosen for its intrinsic qualities and for its strong visual expression: They explicitly illustrate the manufacturing process by way of their form or finishing.
The exhibition illustrates how a material in combination with creativity and technical innovation lead to countless formal possibilities and encourage new exploration.
Participating designers:
Ron Arad, Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Destroyers/Builders, Christophe De la Fontaine ( Dante Goods and Bads), Tom Dixon, Konstantin Grcic, Thomas Heatherwick, Jakob Jørgensen, Xavier Lust, Sigve Knutson, Max Lamb, Joris Laarman Lab, Philippe Malouin, Muller van Severen, PELLE, Lewis Power, Maarten van Severen, Studio Swine, Jonas Trampedach, Danny Venlet, Michael Young, Oskar Zieta.
Additionally, the Konschthal has edited a book in conjunction with the exhibition, published by London based Sternberg Press and available here: sternberg-press.com/product/metalworks/
Curation, exhibition scenography & design: Georges Zigrand Design Consultancy
Co-curator: Charlotte Masse, Konschthal
Graphic design: Laurent Daubach / Designbureau
mirror mirror, cultural reflections in fashion
mirror mirror, cultural reflections in fashion is a temporary exhibition at Mudam, Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg. It is showing the in-house fashion design collection acquired over the last 25 years. Some truly visionary pieces that have become iconic for its time.
We designed this exhibition in a space never before been fully used for this purpose due to its architectural presence, challenging light and lack of possibilities to fix or hang anything. We hijacked some architectural elements and played with the space to connect and oppose the different works. The display follows a fluid path of crossovers and intersections, reflecting the hybrid nature of these pieces and creating a dialogue between them.
Artists:
Hussein Chalayan
Helmut Lang
Martin Margiela
Hiroaki Ohya
Grit and Jerszy Seymour
Walter Van Beirendonck
Junya Watanabe
Bernhard Willhelm
Exhibition dates: 30 Oct 2021 – 24 Apr 2022
Collection: Mudam
Curator: Sarah Zigrand
Scenography: Georges Zigrand
Kulturhuef – Printing Museum, Gutenberg reloaded
In collaboration with graphic designer Laurent Daubach we have designed a permanent exhibition about the history of printing for the Kulturhuef in Grevenmacher, Luxembourg. The pièce de résistance of the exhibition is a timeline with integrated showcases, spanning over the whole length of the main gallery. The timeline gives the visitor an educationally valuable overview of technical and related political changes from the beginnings of printing up to the 21st century.
Wiedersehen macht Freude
My deckchairs, fitted with a custom designed fabric which shows all the colours of the 28 EU member state flags proportionally ( see post ‘Work hard, play hard’ ), have re-surfaced this summer in the old town of Luxembourg City. A year after the Luxembourg Presidency of the European Council they have been distributed to several city centre sites and used as public space furniture over the summer months.
Unfortunately we might have to take some classic blue, red & white out for next year.
Graphics: Laurent Daubach
Romain Urhausen – a journey through space & time
In collaboration with the curator Marguy Conzémius from the CNA (Centre national de l’audiovisuel) and the London based graphic designer Melanie Mues, we have designed a retrospective exhibition of the luxembourgish photographer Romain Urhausen.
Romain Urhausen, born in 1930, has accumulated such an enormous bulk of work over his lifetime that one of the challenges was to fit a maximum of artworks into a rather challengingly small space. Furthermore, we thought that photographs, sculptures, inventions & design objects from the 50’s up to the 90’s deserve an analogue rather then a digital display solution. The visitor therefore is invited to discover in a hands-on and interactive way, a large number of artworks from the artist’s journey through space & time.
ROMAIN URHAUSEN – FOTOGRAF exhibition at the CNA Display 01 & 02 in Dudelange, open until 30.10.2016
Curiosity Cabinet on tour
For the luxembourgish Presidency of the European Council from 01.07 – 31.12.2015 the Ministry of Culture commissioned me to design three spaces in the Justus Lipsius building of the Council of Europe in Brussels.
One part of the project consisted of this curiosity cabinet exhibition made from 45 individual front or back-lit boxes. The cabinet showed a more unusual side of luxembourgish history & culture, mixing together an apparent random selection of oddities and stories from past and present. One of the aims was to focus on the people (artists, writers, film makers, cooks, engineers & inventors) but also institutions, industries & customs that contribute to the fabric of the country, showing a side that would be little known outside its borders.
Following the Presidency the exhibition was recently shown at the Ministère de la Culture in Luxembourg. Currently the concept is being evaluated to be adapted to go on tour.
Presidency of the European Council design project – part 2
The Presidency campfire meeting room, for the Luxembourg presidency of the European Council
By analysing the usually conventional set-up of meeting rooms for diplomats & heads of state one thing becomes clear, there is always a certain distance between the individual seatings – not too close and yet not too far away from your interlocutor. On this occasion I was able to challenge this status quo by creating a space where everybody had to decide for himself how close he or she wants to sit in relation to their interlocutor (and how good a friend he or she really is).
The ‘campfire’ is a space for people that share a common project & a common cause. A place where you can sit all night talking to friends, sorting out differences and coming out with a stronger bond… even if that looks like a difficult thing to achieve at this moment in time.
Presidency of the European Council design project – part 1
For the luxembourgish Presidency of the European Council from 01.07 – 31.12.2015 the Ministry of Culture has commissioned me to design three spaces in the Justus Lipsius building of the Council of Europe in Brussels.
This part of the project consists of an curiosity cabinet made from 45 individual front or back-lit boxes. The cabinet shows a more unusual side of luxembougish history & culture, mixing together an apparent random selection of oddities and stories from past and present. One of the aims was to focus on the people (artists, writers, film makers, cooks, engineers & inventors) but also institutions, industries & customs that contribute to the fabric of the country, showing a side that would be little known outside its borders.
The content has been developed in collaboration with the Ministry of culture and a booklet has also been produced to help the baffled visitors to understand the slightly obscure images & objects.
Last but not least, luxembourgish artists Paul Kirps and Filip Markiewicz have also produced specific artworks for the cabinet.
Click here to download the exhibition booklet
Graphic design: designbureau.lu
Lego style outdoor furniture for the almost grown-ups
Conventional tables and chairs wouldn’t have worked that well for the terrasse of my local hangout. The cultural centre Carrérotondes in Luxembourg, with its concerts, exhibitions, kids theatres and parties required a flexible way of sitting (and drinking). The Lego principle gives plenty of options on how to configure the modules, leaving it up to the user and the moment to choose how to use them.
Materials: Custom designed male & female rubber connectors combined with water resistant low-cost plywood.
Photo © Sven Becker
Look at me, look at me
A bit of fluorescent tape and you’ve got attention, even if you have been around for hundreds of years.
DIY magic
Magic tape must be one of the best office inventions after the post-it. In combination with low-budget DIY needs it becomes even more magic, as I’ve noticed on this door of an Architects studio in Barcelona…
Cheap & cheerful
Creating a street stall for a one day event to sell hand made scarves from Bangladesh is not my usual design brief, especially if the budget had to be kept at an absolute minimum. But there is always a way, even if it means going to the DIY shop..
Scarves designed by Luxembourgish designer Anne-Marie Herckes with the assistance of the Vocational Training and Employment Generation Project of the NGO ‘Friendship’.
Beads & buttons fun
I saw this ingenious way of displaying buttons in a Madrid shop. The big wheely device looks more like something from a fun fair and turns at will in order to best view all the buttons on display.
This principle could also be used in many other contexts like interpretative devices in museums …etc. And of course as a way of visually displaying information on the i-phone…
paperJam TV set design
Luxembourg based media group ‘Maison Moderne’ has commissioned me to design a TV set for its new venture, paperJam TV.
The design concept is based on an intricate curtain wall featuring numerous cut-outs based on the pattern of the existing paperJam logo. The idea was to create a notion of visual depth and shadows that ‘texture’ the background in an otherwise extremely confined space (4,5m X 3,5m). The pattern also helps to blur the scale and make the space appear larger then it really is.
Additionally we installed RGB LED’s to graze up the walls behind the hanging ‘curtains’. These LED’s are individually addressable, enabling the background to be animated by gently pulsating and changing colour schemes.
Photo: © Olivier Minaire / Maison Moderne (TM)
paperJam TV: www.paperJam.TV
Shopping info point in Luxembourg city
A very small but dynamic, elegant and highly versatile space commissioned by the Union Commerciale de la Ville de Luxembourg.
Primarily it is a place where visitors can get any shopping information (opening hours, retail services, maps, customised shopping trails …etc) the city has on offer. Within that primary task of giving out information it is also a place where the city’s retailers can celebrate particular themes and organise special events & exhibitions.
Furthermore, the second aim of the space was to establish best practice retail design with innovative materials and finishes. The floor is made from two coloured resin floor (made from cast Polyurethane). The grey brown floor is split in the middle by a central band of white that invites the visitor in from the outside. This band is then folding up to create a central display made from thermoformed partially back-lit white Corian sheets.
By contrast, all the walls are lacquered in a warm dark and super mat Nextel paint finish. This material, often used on control panels and dashboards, is hard wearing and extremely light absorbing to minimise light reflections and emphasis the artifacts & displays. Moreover, the lighting is kept low to focus on the displays and create a beautiful museum like experience.
Cramped into an area of only 50m2 the space is packed with multiple functionalities while keeping a sober and high-quality appearance.
Georges Zigrand Design Consultancy 
leave a comment